Detroit's Mayor Will Leave Office and Go to Jail

By SUSAN SAULNY and NICK BUNKLEY

Published: September 5, 2008

DETROIT -- Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to felony charges here on Thursday and agreed to resign from office and serve 120 days in jail, ending eight months of political turmoil but also opening a new era of uncertainty for the city.

After the agreement, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan suspended her hearing on whether to remove Mr. Kilpatrick for misconduct, relieving her of being in the awkward position of possibly ousting the mayor, a fellow Democrat, from office.

''It is my profound hope that we can now write a new history for this great but embattled city and that the citizens of Detroit begin the healing process to move forward,'' she said. But even as the fate of Mr. Kilpatrick became clear on Thursday, a new layer of potential pitfalls came into view.

The City Council that will now try to bring stability to the nation's 11th largest city is known for its volatility. Its two top leaders, Kenneth V. Cockrel Jr., the council president who will now be interim mayor, and Monica Conyers, who will become president of the Council, were recently involved in a public shouting match that has become a running joke.

And some members of the Council are under federal investigation for possibly taking payoffs before approving a multimillion-dollar sewage contract.

''Moving forward will require all of us to put aside the anger and bitterness of the past few months,'' said Mr. Cockrel, 42, ''and heal as a community.''

Mr. Cockrel, whose father, a civil rights activist, died in 1989 before he could achieve his own mayoral aspirations and whose stepmother is a current council member, said chief among his responsibilities would be ''restoring the credibility of not only the mayor but also of the city of Detroit.''

In an evening address from his office, an upbeat Mr. Kilpatrick took a parting swipe at Ms. Granholm. He also acknowledged what he called his ''poor judgment,'' asked the city to throw its support behind Mr. Cockrel and gave a litany of his achievements.

''I want to emphasize tonight that I take full responsibility for my own actions,'' he said. ''I wish with all my heart that we could turn back the hands of time and tell that young man to make better choices. But I can't. Our challenge now is to put the anguish and turmoil of recent months behind us and join in a common cause to love our city, to love one another and move forward together.''

Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings, a mayoral appointee, announced her retirement immediately after Mr. Kilpatrick's plea, and a host of other city officials and staff members are expected to leave their jobs. It all adds up to a tremendous amount of tumult for a poverty-stricken city that had been experiencing glimmers of a renaissance after decades of population loss and decline.

''If you drove over the city 10 years ago and now, you'd see many points of evidence that indeed there are good things going on in Detroit,'' said Michael Smith, a historian of the city. ''The sad thing is, Kwame Kilpatrick was becoming a good mayor and making some progress. He had a brilliant future.''

Much of the new enthusiasm in downtown Detroit is credited to Mr. Kilpatrick, a charismatic leader who brought a high level of energy and expectations to office when he was elected for the first time in 2001 at just 31 years old. With new attractions along a redeveloped riverfront, fresh business investment downtown and new housing in the city core, things seemed to be moving in the right direction.

''I think we can get the momentum back that we had before this happened,'' said Doug Rothwell, the president of Detroit Renaissance, a group of business leaders that promotes economic development in the city. ''There's no question that things have been put on pause during these eight months.''

Mr. Kilpatrick's ordeal also leaves ripple effects in the form of aggravated racial tension between whites and blacks and the city and its suburbs at a time when the region is suffering through a serious economic downturn.

Earlier this year, Mr. Kilpatrick claimed he was victimized by a ''lynch mob mentality.'' His supporters were critical of the possibility that Ms. Granholm, who is white, might oust the black mayor, who was called racial epithets and anonymously pilloried in city graffiti and on local Web sites. Bad feelings linger.

''The people who used to occupy Detroit before they fled for the suburbs want it back,'' said Michael Wilson, a driver for a hotel, echoing a sentiment that is not uncommon in struggling neighborhoods. ''They want to set up a power structure they like.''

''This plays to some of the stereotypes about the city, that it is corrupt and has issues with crime and various social ills,'' said Vincent Hutchings, a political science professor at the University of Michigan. ''The elephant in the room is the issue of race. There is an urban core-suburban conflict, which is also a black-white conflict.''

''They'll be able to recover in that whatever taint is associated with Kilpatrick need not follow his successor,'' Mr. Hutchings said. ''But his successor would still have to grapple with the endemic problems associated with living in such a segregated state.''

In recent weeks, the city government became progressively more paralyzed during the playing out of the scandal, which stemmed mainly from the revelation that the mayor had an extramarital affair with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, and his efforts to keep that affair secret.

Mr. Kilpatrick was accused of forcing three police officers out of their jobs, and then, when they sued the city over their dismissal, of using $8.4 million in public money to settle the lawsuit on favorable terms before the affair could be disclosed in court testimony.

The affair became public anyway, when The Detroit Free Press published steamy text messages sent from a city-owned pager that detailed much of the romance between Mr. Kilpatrick and Ms. Beatty, who resigned when the affair became public. The text messages and the affair contradicted testimony Mr. Kilpatrick had given under oath, resulting in eight felony charges. Later, he was charged with two more felonies for assault when, investigators said, he interfered with police officers trying to serve a subpoena related to the text-message case.

Mr. Kilpatrick's lawyers tried unsuccessfully in recent days to negotiate plea agreements that would not involve jail time, but prosecutors were adamant. Mr. Kilpatrick will serve 120 days in county jail for the guilty pleas to two felony counts of obstruction of justice. He also pleaded no contest to one of the assault charges. The others were dismissed.

Mr. Kilpatrick will give up his pension and law license and pay $1 million in restitution to the City of Detroit as part of the plea deal, and he will be on probation for five years after his sentence.

But what happens to Detroit is less clear. There are high hopes amid the uncertainty.

''I would think that at this point in time Mr. Cockrel will get the benefit of the proverbial honeymoon and have the benefit of the City Council rallying around him,'' said Larry Dubin, professor of law at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. ''There's a great deal of optimism in this region. I think Detroiters are very resilient people.''

PHOTOS: Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick pleaded guilty on Thursday to two counts of obstruction of justice. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL PUGLIANO/GETTY IMAGES); Christine Beatty, Mr. Kilpatrick's former chief of staff, and her lawyer, Jeffrey Morganroth, were in the court for the hearing. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF KOWALSKY/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY)(A16); Kenneth V. Cockrel Jr., shown in June, will be interim mayor. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLOS OSORIO/ASSOCIATED PRESS)(A20)